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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Leading Through Crisis and Continuous Improvement with Jeff Flaks
00:21:37
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to this episode of Leadership Unscripted at Becker's Healthcare Podcast. I'm Chris Sosa, your host, and I'm thrilled today to be joined by Jeff Flacks, who, of course, is president and CEO of Hartford Healthcare. Jeff, thank you for joining us today.
- [00:13]
B
My pleasure. Thank you.
- [00:15]
A
Wonderful, Jeff. Yeah. This is the podcast where we take the audience on a little journey to get to know you through the lens of your healthcare career. Are you ready for that?
- [00:23]
B
Yeah. Excited. Thank you.
- [00:24]
A
Awesome. First, just let us know a little bit more about yourself and your organization.
- [00:29]
B
So, Chris, I have been at Hartford Healthcare now. It'll be 22 years, actually on April 1st. So I'm on the precipice of the anniversary, and it's been the privilege of a lifetime. Amazing organization, amazing community, amazing people, and a privilege to be here. But I started my career in many ways. I went to my graduate work at GW and George Washington University was tremendously instrumental in my life. I did my fellowship in Detroit at the Detroit Medical center, and I stayed in Detroit for about three and a half years and then had the opportunity to work in New York City for just over six years. So I've had privilege to work in great places with great people and very, very fortunate.
- [01:16]
A
That's terrific, Jeff. Yeah, like a lot of leaders who've followed a similar arc, you've been all over the place, and I'm sure that's informed your career as well. First question I have for you, though, is simply, what do you consider the most memorable day or period from your career?
- [01:31]
B
You know, I think my career, Chris, in some ways, it's bookmarked by two different really significant events. One, I was working at St. Vincent's in Manhattan on 9 11. We were the responding hospital. And it was an extraordinary experience. I mean, to be there in that moment and to be part and realize the centrality, the importance of the hospital in a moment of something of a tragedy of that proportion. That was an incredible experience. And I saw the very best in humanity that day. And I saw some of the very worst, you know, tragedy, terrorism, events we've ever experienced. More recently, you know, in 2019, I was appointed CEO here at Hartford Healthcare. In March of 2020, Covid arrived. So, you know, I also had the, you know, really privilege to serve in that moment where, again, that. That importance, the central nature of a hospital and the health system to responding to a community was so critical. So, you know, those two events, those two days, you know, March 14, March 20, for me, September 11, 2001, were days that I'll never forget. And in many ways, they've become such guiding aspects of how I want to serve and lead.
- [02:48]
A
Jeff, let's go back to 9 11. It was hard to believe was 25 years ago almost already. Wow. So when you think of that day, let's focus on what you saw as the best of humanity and the people you were working with. I mean, what are, how did you set the scene and what inspired you about the way the staff at St. Vincent's reacted and served the community that day?
- [03:13]
B
First of all, Chris, I'm sitting there, it's 9am we're in a meeting in the boardroom at St. Vincent's it was a large leadership meeting of our team. And we heard a noise and the noise sounded like it could have been like a boiler or something, like a mechanical type noise. And moments later, maybe like two, three minutes later, one of our facility directors kind of pushed the door open and he said a small commuter plane hit the top of one of the Trade Centers. And that's what we thought, that's what we heard. And we immediately were going into our emergency response. And St. Vincent had history with this because in 1993, when the trade center was bombed from the garage, they were the responding organization to that. And even going back to the Titanic, they responded to the survivors of the Titanic. So it was a very historic institution. But in that day, we went outside and it wasn't. But, you know, a few minutes later that we saw the second plane at the Trade center, we knew that this was something different and these weren't commuter planes. And I saw the institution spring into action. I saw people who were just heroic. I saw our chief information officer, he was the initial person leading with the clinical team, doing the triaging, you know, of people who were survivors and impacted and responders. I saw people volunteer. I saw people willing to help in any way. I saw community members offering anything they could to help. So I saw the people who ran into the pit immediately and into the plume in the ambulances and the fire and the first responders. It was unbelievable to just see the bravery, the courage, the professionals and the preparedness. And I saw it go on for five or more consecutive days. And it just kept shifting to where it became, you know, a response. And then it became a behavioral health related set of issues. And, you know, I saw the best in humanity. I truly did in every way. And at the same time, I did go down. I was part of a response team in the pit and I saw the just mass carnage in many Ways. And just to see that the smells that existed in the area, the industrial kind of aspects, the sheer earth that was impacted, I'll never forget it. I'll never forget it. But I really, most importantly, Chris, saw what it means to work in health care, that when a tragedy strikes, the hospitals, the health system, the clinicians, they become the most central providers and it's something we should never lose sight of and we have to always be prepared and ready.
- [05:55]
A
That's well said, Jeff. Thank you so much for sharing all that with us. I mean, certainly anyone who's live during that time, including myself, has just vivid, visceral memories of that horrible day. But thank goodness there are people, first responders, including those in St. Vincent and everywhere else, who responded to that tragedy and beyond that, were able to take their training to the next level in that moment. Then you referred to what happened during COVID 19. Certainly that is still reverberating today in a number of ways. So they're not the same in really any aspect, unless you're referring to the rarity of it and the necessity of a health system in that moment. So what sticks out to you as far as dealing with that and where you were at the time at Hartford, that is.
- [06:46]
B
Chris, you just said it though. Where they are the same is that when tragedy strikes of this kind of epic proportion in the community, the hospital becomes the center of the response in so many ways. During COVID my gosh, the bravery that I saw, the courage of our staff, we were working with such unknowns, and when everyone else was being told to stay home, shelter in place, what did people in health care do? They came in, they ran in. And the innovation, the ingenuity, the willingness to discovery, that occurred to be responding to an ever evolving situation. I was so proud to stand shoulder to shoulder, to be part of this and to see the people in our organization and across America and beyond figure out ways to keep our community safe. And it was in many ways a moment. I said this, Chris, so many times during that crisis that in healthcare, we can't go back to normal. We have to be better than normal. Because it also showed so many opportunities to improve. So many opportunities to make things better. So many things that we knew weren't good enough but now became more accentuated. So, you know, Covid made organizations across America better. It's made health care better, and it needs to. And those lessons need to be indelible within our health care system. And, you know, we need to continue to challenge ourselves to constantly improving because there were a Lot of identified areas that we weren't as well prepared as we should have been or could have been. And there were areas that we weren't as well prepared to respond to. And today we're much better, but we need to keep getting better.
- [08:19]
A
Jeff, I love that attitude that you bring to that, to anything that's a flashpoint in human history or even just an everyday occurrence at the hospital, in this case, referring to Covid, just being able to say, you know what? We weren't good enough in so many ways. Yeah, I love that. And just your attitude toward improving, and I'm sure that trickles down and filters down into the rest of Hartford health care. I'm sure it's the idea anyway, Right,
- [08:44]
B
Chris, Our mantra is we're the best at getting better at Hartford healthcare. That's what we talk about. We want to be the best at getting better. Now, that doesn't mean. Chris, we want to be the best, right? To what end? To what purpose? It's a moment in time. It's not about being the best. It's about being better tomorrow than you are today, being better next year than you are this year. And ultimately, it's about being obsessed with continuous improvement, right? If each person, every team, strives to get better, if we're getting better, right? That's our job in healthcare, to get better, to be better, to do better. And, you know, that's why we talk every day, want to be the best at getting better.
- [09:19]
A
That's the ambition, definitely perfect ambition to have for your line of work. Jeff, turning the page just a little bit, I want to take you to the next question, and that is, what is something you learned outside of healthcare that you've applied to your career?
- [09:34]
B
So I grew up. My parents were public school teachers.
- [09:36]
A
Okay.
- [09:37]
B
My dad taught for 43 years. My mom taught for 35 years. My dad was a high school basketball coach for the majority of his teaching career. So I grew up in the gym with him on the bench, on the bus. So I got exposed and I played myself. I have a son who's a college basketball player today. I got exposed a lot to coaches and to me. The CEO, in some ways, needs to be the chief coach in many ways, because we're about developing talent. We're about building teams. We're about achieving kind of greatness through others, and we're about understanding each person's motivation, their individual aspirations, and helping finding pathways to grow and develop our people and create opportunity for all. So for me, a lot of my learnings were either as Just being exposed to coaches. My dad is a coach. Exposed as a player, or more modern day exposed as a parent. Is. Is these the notion of team. And in health care, I say, you know, this is the ultimate team sport. Nothing. We operate three helicopters, we operate a very large transplantation program. You know, we do amazing things here, but none of them are done by an individual or even a few individuals. All of these amazing accomplishments are done by large teams of people coming together with a singular purpose and with individual contributions where the whole is greater than the individual parts. So that learning for me carries forward every day.
- [11:11]
A
That's a great description. I mean, it's funny that you always hear the cliche. It's like, yeah, this is not just about sports, it's about life. It's like, well, here you are, having taken those lessons and applied them directly to what you're doing in Hartford. That's so cool. Jeff, I also want to ask you. We've gone through some of the more memorable moments of your career, and they're indelible, to be sure, but what you say is your most. The accomplishment you're most proud of and
- [11:39]
B
why the accomplishment I'm most proud of. Look, I was extraordinarily proud of our team during COVID Extraordinarily proud. I mean, I don't know if there's any that I could ever be more proud of, because what I saw, the selflessness, and again, that competence and that ingenuity was extraordinary. So to be part of a team that served so admirably and without self interest, that was an amazing, amazing accomplishment. I'm really proud. We just put together a great partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering, first one ever, where, where we have now become their first real effective clinical partner. And I'm really excited about that because what it does is it brings the world's greatest cancer care in so many ways, the greatest research, and it now allows it to be so much more accessible, local, locally, and the people who wouldn't otherwise have opportunity to receive care, you know, in this case at Memorial in New York. So I'm really proud of that. I mean, this is going to change lives, save lives, improve lives. So I'm extraordinarily proud of that. I'm very proud. Our organization, Chris, just got recognized nationally by the national alliance for Workforce Development as the number one institution in America. And what I'm so proud of about that is I describe all the time when we help our people grow, when we identify new growth pathways, new opportunities for people to train, develop, get new exposure, we're changing not only these people's lives, we're changing generational lives within their families. And I'm really proud that the culture of Hartford HEALTHCARE now has been recognized as a national leader in many ways, the national leader around creating venues and approaches to grow our people. Because to me, that's so important. This is about people. And, you know, for me, we have 48,000 colleagues in our organization, and we want to create opportunity for every person in our organization to grow and develop and have the best professional experience they can have and be, become everything they aspire to be and help them aspire for things they may not even be able to imagine. So I'm really, really proud of that distinction, and we're focused on taking it to new levels.
- [13:58]
A
Those are fantastic goals indeed, Jeff, and, you know, congratulations on those accomplishments. I sense and hear the coach in you coming out and all of that, which is certainly a wonderful approach to have. I think that's a good segue, though, to my next question for you. And that simply is, what do you think is an underrated leadership trait? And who have you seen embody that? It can be a specific person, a group of person, or whatever, whatever you
- [14:23]
B
think is appropriate in that way from a leadership standpoint. Something I feel doesn't get enough attention, and I think it's pivotal. It's the art of managing up, right? So focused people work hard to manage kind of the people within their charge. In fact, managing up is so crucial in terms of, you know, that. That, you know, we believe really strongly in servant leadership here, right? And we work for the people who work with us. But at the same time, that. That art of managing up, you know, I had the privilege here from over 12 years of being the chief operating officer to. To an extraordinary CEO. Elliot Joseph had amazing accomplishments helping build Hartford Healthcare, establish Hartford, Hartford Healthcare. And when I think back, you know, we were great partners. But much of my success was helping manage UP and making sure I could support Elliot and help Elliot grow and help Elliot have the right information, the right level of support to be successful. And I think for leaders, if they kind of think through their own perspective, are they doing everything they can to manage UP in the organization, you know, to ensure that information is flowing in both directions and ensuring that there is equally focused kind of on the people they work with who may be senior to them as they are to work with the people who are directly within their direct report. They should be equally committed to managing in both directions.
- [15:47]
A
You know, Jeff, you're one of the first executives I'VE heard use that exact phrase, but I think it's certainly apropos and as you said, it can be very easy as a leader in any position really to say, you know what, I've got to make sure the people who my direct reports are getting better, which is certainly what you want to do as a leader. But yeah, to think about it going both ways. Yeah, that's a wonderful insight. Thank you for sharing. Jeff, last question I have for you. It's somewhat related to what you were just talking about, but I think it's different enough that I think we can take it in a good direction. That simply wasn't an issue or aspect of healthcare that you think deserves a brighter spotlight and who should be shining that spotlight?
- [16:26]
B
Yeah, it's a great, it's a great question. You know, when I think about healthcare today, I think about the fact that we cannot protect the status quo. It must be disrupted. And at the same point, Chris, in so many ways, this is the best health care has ever been. If you think about serious safety events, right. They're at a lower percentage than really ever before. We have seen tremendous improvements in terms of never events. Right. They're getting closer and closer to never. We're seeing great improvements. But I feel at the same time, when we think about access, we think about affordability, we think about health equity and we think about quality and safety in so many ways we've made tremendous improvement, but we cannot protect that status quo. It needs to be disrupted. Like, this is the best time we've ever had in healthcare. We've never been able to get better faster than we can right now. What artificial intelligence can do for us, what machine based learning can do for us. This is an incredible moment to address things that have been historically intractable, problems that today we have solutions for. So to me, the focus on access, affordability, health equity, safety and quality, this is the moment to really disrupt ourselves and to not be satisfied with where we are, to recognize the great improvements we've made, but to also recognize this mandate for change. Because healthcare must become more accessible, it must become more affordable. The issues around health equity, we have an absolute mandate to address the quality and safety with the tremendous improvements we have, not nearly at the level they can and should be and will be as time goes forward. This is a great moment in healthcare.
- [18:10]
A
Yeah. Again, Jeff, I love your attitude, being able to say, you know what, look at all the cool things that we've actually done. Because it can be a bit easy to say as someone who's in healthcare, Whether you're a leader or you're a nurse, a technician, whatever your job might be, it's like, yeah, we have a lot of issues we have to deal with. Well, yes, but at least we don't have to deal with a lot of these things as acutely as we did before. I mean, again, that's a terrific attitude that you brought. Let me follow up with this, Jeff. So when you walk in the door every day, I mean, how are you looking to spread and that kind of attitude? So, you know what? Let's be the best at getting better today.
- [18:51]
B
Yeah. First of all, nothing great is ever achieved without vision, without enthusiasm. So part of leadership that's so important is to be able to align a team around a vision, a common purpose, a core set of values. And to me, that has to be done with a belief. And it's got to be legitimate belief, an authentic belief and optimism. Right. I mean, if you want people to engage and to believe in the commitment, direction of an organization, they've got to believe in it and to help believe in it. You have to believe in it as a leader. It's got to be real and authentic. So to me, I have a fundamental belief, right, that we are absolutely on the precipice of making extraordinary improvements and health care. And I recognize we've got tremendous headwinds in front of us today. And the headwinds are very, very real. I mean, the impact of tariffs, the issues on some of the federal reforms, issues around Medicaid, around research, all very real issues, global issues outside of our control, affect organizations like ours across America. But if you look just beyond that, if you look on the horizon, this is a great opportunity to take health care to levels that will change people's lives. It'll make people in our community healthier, it will drive the cost down, it will improve the access, it's going to make healthcare more equitable. So I have a belief, and every day I come into the, you know, our organization, I truly see more proof points and more gratitude to the people who work in organization, because I see the work they do every day, and I just want to help create an environment for them to have the most success they possibly can and to serve our communities to the absolute best of our ability. Because, Chris, as a leader, I think we have an obligation when we're in the role to do the very best we can. Our ambition has to be to leave the organization much better than we found it. And we have to make sure we don't waste time. We have to have an impatience about trying to make our communities better every day and do the most we can, have no regrets, ultimately, to do the best we can in the time we have to make things better for as many people as we possibly can, both from a healthcare standpoint and. And those who work within our organization. So I love what I do and I feel so blessed to work in health care. I really do.
- [21:03]
A
Jeff, that makes perfect sense. And here's hoping that all of us in health care, whether you're a CEO or whatever your role is, journalists like myself, were able to make the most of this moment that you know, that you're referring to. Jeff, this has been an absolutely delightful conversation. Thank you for taking us through your healthcare journey for the last several decades. Really, I can't wait till we have a chance to share all your insights with our audience. And you know what? I can't wait till we cross your cross paths again, whether it's virtually or in person. It's going to be wonderful.
- [21:33]
B
Grateful to you. Thank you so much.